DTC and Other News

In the China adoption world, "DTC" stands for dossier to country. It is a big step! It means your home study, USCIS approval, and entire dossier are completed, authenticated, uploaded, and mailed to China! All the paperwork, blood, sweat, and tears we've put in to compiling everything is done! China now has all our information and can decide whether we will be allowed to proceed with the adoption or not. I'm thrilled to have this step out of the way! We knew we were getting close, so decided to have a little fun while raking leaves this weekend!

A Facebook friend who was adopting a boy from our new little guy's orphanage stopped at the orphanage and took pictures for a few of us mamas who are waiting to travel. I got three precious pictures of our guy and a whole lot of heartache. It's a very crowded orphanage with only a few nannies. I'm so very worried about him! 

I seriously cannot wait to get this boy in my arms! I love him so! It's rumored that after you are DTC, you have about 4-5 months until you travel. That puts us traveling sometime towards the end of February or March. I can't wait!!!

October Blues

I have to say that October is traditionally one of my favorite months! I absolutely LOVE the vibrant leaf colors, the crispness in the air, the seasons changing before our eyes, lots of fun Halloween plans, and pulling out our trusty sweaters. I love the anticipation of the upcoming holiday season! Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas! What's not to love!? And I do love it. I love it every single year, and this year is no different. It's just that I am feeling the twinge of the "last years" as well. Last year at this time, our dossier was on its way to Russia. You couldn't have pulled me down from the high I was on! We had completed our home study and registration dossier, our USCIS I600a application was on its way, and we were done with our major fundraisers. Life was so, so good!! We were simply waiting for Russia to give us the go ahead to come meet our girl!

This year, much is the same. Our dossier for China has finally finished with all three of the certifications it receives and arrived safely in our agency's office on Friday. Our dossier should be en route to China (known as DTC or dossier to country) sometime this week! This is a major step in the China adoption process! Our approval has come from the U.S. to adopt a child with Down syndrome from China. And I am excited. I'm also terrified.

I mourn for Dasha every minute of every day. It's a feeling deep within my gut. I never feel quite right. The realizations of what should have been creep up on me unexpectedly. As I was changing out my youngest daughter's summer clothes for fall/winter clothes on Saturday, I broke down weeping in the storage shed. There are rows and rows of Rubbermaid bins that house all the clothes that she would have been wearing. The sense of loss and grief is palpable. I have great hope that if our Canadian friends are allowed to adopt her without interference from Russia and she is finally at home, safe with a family who loves her, that I will be able to let go of these feelings. I have been working a lot on letting myself feel the finality of it. She is not going to be my daughter. After a year of working tirelessly to welcome her into our home, the devastation of this is hard to put into words. My children still pray every single day that Meg will be able to come home to us. We all sense that she should be here, but she is not. It is unbearable to look at the hundreds of pictures and video we have of our time together. Our smiling faces, full of hope, joy, and a love so very deep...it's just too much.

We went to the Salt Lake Temple on Friday, October 4th, to be sealed to our precious Cooper. It was a beautiful, wonderful, bittersweet day. We invited only our immediate family and one of our dearest friends. I am so glad we kept it intimate. It was a deeply personal experience, full of both happiness and heartache.

He will forever be a part of our family. When we all leave this earth and enter into the next life, he will be with us. This brought me such immense joy. I also felt much sorrow that I never got to meet him in this life. He is forever bound to us, and we are so very grateful for the promises made to us that as long as we live righteously, we will be a family forever.

It's very sad for me to look at Cooper's pictures. It's also very, very difficult to believe everything is going to be okay with our new little man, too. I know from Little Flower that our guy is quite fragile. A family that picked their son up from the same orphanage this last week was able to take three pictures of him. They said that the nannies are very nice, but there are only a few of them and rooms and rooms and rooms full of children. It's excruciating to look at pictures of him in his orphanage crib, all alone. I know the realities of life in an orphanage. I've lived in this world of orphan care for 15 months now. I have had over 100 hours of education on parenting an institutionalized child. I've visited an orphanage in Russia. I've seen hundreds of before and after pictures of orphans who were in bad shape before their adoptions. It's just different when you have an actual real time photo of the child you're fighting to make yours and you see how they're currently living. How he'll be forced to live for several more months. It's eating me up inside! We won't be invited to travel until late February or March. That feels forever away!

We continue to push forward, though. I believe now, more than ever, how important families are. I know in my heart of hearts that someday we'll have a child home with us. A former orphan. It's just been a very difficult road so far. My dream for next October is that Dasha will be home with her family in Canada, our China guy will be home with us, and everyone will be healthy, happy, and thriving! I have had many dreams destroyed this past year, but I've got no choice but to continue hoping for this one to come true!! Two children's very lives are depending on this dream!

Update-o-rama!

There have been so many dang adoption things going on lately that I haven't had time to sit and blog about it all! First of all, there has been scary news coming out of Russia. They are threatening to ban all countries that haven't signed a treaty with them, which would include Canada. Of course this frightens me to no end. Our Canadian family is aware of the threats, but have continued on full steam ahead. I love them. More than I can even say. They love my dear Dasha and won't leave her there, even though there's a risk the same thing that happened to us could happen to them.
Not only is this scary from a personal standpoint, but it's also terrifying because it means more Russian orphans will remain just that: orphans. There are thousands and thousands of children who won't be adopted. Do you remember the picture of "Kyle" I posted in this post? I learned he recently passed away. No child should live their life not knowing how important and special they are. No child should live their life being nobody to anybody. No child should die from neglect. It breaks my heart.
Please continue to pray for Dasha girl, though!! She really needs a family. Her time is running out.

In China news.....we received pre approval for another little guy with Down syndrome just yesterday!! It was quite an adventure trying to obtain his file. Once we had his file, of course it was all in Chinese. What!? It hadn't been translated yet! This almost never happens, so of course it happened to us! We had to find someone to translate it for us so we could at least know his medical needs to include it in our letter of intent to adopt him. It all finally worked out, though, and I am so very excited! Isn't he darling!!

He has been at Little Flower (an amazing American run institution/hospital for Chinese orphans with medical needs) since he was two weeks old. He had heart surgery when he was three months old and has been recovering and receiving lots of love there. His orphanage recently called him back because they get money for having kids there. Little Flower wishes he could have stayed a while longer to get stronger and more stable, but such is the life of an orphan. Of course we are terrified he will pass away before we can get to him. If you have it in you to continue to pray for our family, please pray for our new little guy. Please pray he will be strong and healthy and looked after. We are rushing like CRAZY to get to him!! Oh, and just an FYI (because a lot of people have been asking me this), he turns one in November!
We got our I-797 back last week (approval from the US government to adopt a child from China) and we're super excited! Our dossier had to get stamps from Utah certifying all the notaries on our pages are actually notaries. That step is done, and now our dossier is in Washington D.C. It needs stamps from the State Department, then it will go to the Chinese Consulate in D.C. for their approval. After that, it gets sent to China! All of these steps take a few days, but I'm hopeful it will be ready by the end of next week to send across the ocean! Once it's in China, there are several steps before we can actually go get our boy. Our part of the work will mostly be over, but they process the entire adoption before we get there. It makes it nice in the end, because you go for one trip and take your child home with you. Adoption complete! We are hoping for February travel. I mean, of course I'd LOVE to go sooner, but I think February is the earliest at this point. It feels amazing to have our part of the work over with for now, though!!